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I think that many other people should get 10 000 000$ fines for malicious lies. For example Musk for his "Sorry pedo guy. You really did ask for it." tweet and that child bride allegations[1].
And no, I do not buy explanation that convinced jury that "pedo guy" is some standard mild and generic South African insult rather than allegation of raping children.
And people who pushed risky financial instruments while claiming that they are risk-free[2]. With fines waived for unaware low-level pushers in call centers and going into millions for higher-level managers, going into 50 000 000$+ territory at level of CEO. Also when CEO ignored malicious behaviour at lower levels as long as they were profitable rather that ordered it. With jail terms for CEOs that ordered such behaviour. And death penalty for companies while I am at this hobby horse.
[1] Assuming that they were false, I have not verified it deeply.
[2] I got some offer of them and they were deeply misleading and whoever prepared this lies was clueless patsy or evil. Either way this banks would be fined into nonexistence in a just world and if that actions were deliberate by management - they would be all in jail.
Should CNN et al be sued out of existence due to Sandman?
Sandmann was not interested in fighting to the bitter end and accepted undisclosed settlement and minor celebrity status. For few smirks, he is now set for life.
Want to be more Sandmannist than Sandmann himself? ;-)
I doubt he is set for life. His odds of winning were quite low.
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Not familiar with this case, from quick look it does not appear to be as large scale or affecting as many people, or involving blatant log-term and blatantly obvious lies, so I would go with "no".
There was a young kid of even college age visiting DC for a pro life March.
A crazy Native American guy got into his face banging a drum. Sandman smirked.
Media with zero diligence signal boosted a short clip making Sandman basically the face of white supremacy. That is, they turned a young private kid into a national story.
Worse the whole video was available that wholly exonerated any perceived wrong doing by Sandman. Yet the media in their bloodlust didn’t do the tiniest of diligence ran with the story before vetting it at all. Kid was subject to a 2 minute hate based on such gross neglect.
Amazingly "optimistic" of you to think they didn't do any due diligence rather then that they did it and didn't care at all.
They had to watch the video to edit it down to what they showed.
I assume stupidity and zero effort and that they found already cropped clip on Twitter or similar place and reposted it.
Maybe they were more malicious and less lazy and stupid.
The thing they're not lazy about is making sure they have ownership of a clip before they play it on air since the system of who/whom that we call a legal system actually recognizes media ownership claims as important (for now at least) so they would have obtained rights to the video before playing it.
I am pretty sure that they could claim that it is case of fair use, so they had no need for that
(IANAL)
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If that is accurate they definitely deserved large penalty, though markedly lower than enough to bankrupt CNN.
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From your example it looks like the only people who should pay 10M$ per lie, are your political opponents. Can you name some example of people who should pay similar fines for saying things you agreed with at the time?
Actually, Elon Musk is not my political opponent. And to my irritation even after that pedo guy I kind of like him despite trying to avoid that.
Also, I bet that many of bank fraudsters and CEO deliberately ignoring evil perpetrated by their bank share my political preferences (at least, enough of them to vote for the same people).
I was always against defrauding people and calling them paedophiles/murderers/etc or claiming to have fake children based on transparently false claims.
So I am not really able to provide such examples.
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